PSP World

Sony Says PSP Piracy on the Decline

Despite the recent news that peripheral maker Datel has found a way to hack the new PSP 3000, Sony remains confident that their hardware is resistant enough to prevent most mainstream users from engaging in piracy. Could it be that a combination of forces have caused some early pirates to give up their plundering ways and embrace the legitimate features offered by Sony? Speaking to the MTV gaming blog earlier today, Sony hardware marketing exec John Koller said that recent studies done by the company show a decline in the amount of piracy happening on the system.

"We’ve made really no secret [that there] certainly has been some piracy on the PSP. We’ve seen that as a significant issue — it’s trending down right now, we’ve seen the piracy not be as such prevalent in the last month to two months. But it has been a problem for us. We’ve noticed there’s kind of a ‘good vs. evil’ battle that we track on many of the forums and many of the pirated web sites. There’s certainly people that are standing up and fighting for what we consider the good side, the rights of developers and publishers to make money on their IP."

If the results of this research are in fact correct, and less piracy is taking place on the PSP, what are the possible reasons behind this change? For one, the newer hardware has proven more difficult to hack, and in some cases is still impossible. The underground hacking community waits patiently for the release of the Datel Blue Tool at the end of November to see if it will actually bypass Sony's new security measures. On the other hand, new offerings from the company have made it easier than ever before to purchase and enjoy content on the machine. The PSP Store allows customers to download games (even ones that are old and out of print) directly to a memory stick. This has to be easier than messing around with all of the nonsense required to get custom firmware running on the system, causing many users to simply go with the easier, paid alternative.

[Source: MTV Multiplayer Blog]